How to increase your fanbase – Know your target audience

Nowadays, there are countless ways to make your music available for everyone. In theory, the process is simple. Just upload your songs, sets or podcasts on different social networks but… who’s going to listen? Who are your fans? Where are they? How do they behave on social networks? What time are they most active?

At the beginning, building a fanbase can be a very slow and boring process. It takes a LOT of patience because don’t think you’re going to have thousands of fans overnight, even if your music is incredible. But nothing is impossible! Don’t be discouraged if your music is only heard by your family, friends or by your dog. All the great artists you know started somewhere. For this reason, and based on the knowledge I acquired when I studied Marketing at university, I decided to write this post that can help you build and increase your fanbase, a process that instead of being boring can be quite fun and exciting.

Difference of two years. Information extracted from Soundcloud.

When I started this music project in 2015, knowing my target audience was the main challenge I came across after having released my first songs. I realized that I had few fans on my social networks and few people listened to my music. Fortunately, at that time I was studying Marketing at university and one of the subjects I had was “Internet Marketing Applications”, which would become very useful to understand the potential of the Internet to build my fanbase. So, knowing my target audience has become a priority.

For those who don’t know, one of my great musical influences is the German artist Boris Brejcha. As I thought my music had some similarities to his musical style, I thought his fans might also enjoy my music too. So, I did a detailed search on his social networks to find out in which countries people heard his music the most. Google Trends is also a very useful tool to find out where your fans are by searching for keywords. You can put the name of the artist that most influences you or the name of your music genre. Interestingly, most of my fans right now are from countries where the sound of Boris is very much heard.

In my case, the age group, by common sense, would also be easy to stipulate. People between the ages of 18 and 35 are the ones who listen most to electronic music. Obviously, there are exceptions depending on the music genre but then it’s your job to do a research and find out the age range of your target audience. Remember that there may be people and even your fans who are outside the age range of your target audience but your goal is to reach the greatest number of people and that’s why this information is important when directing your promotions and advertising on your social networks.

The gender is also very important and variable depending on the style of music. A few years ago, underground electronic music was mostly heard by men but in recent years the underground scene has gained a high number of female followers. So, remember to do some research in this direction. Is your audience mostly male, female, or both?

Hozho’s fanbase on Facebook (Jan 2018)

All this knowledge is important when making your promotions and advertisements so that you don’t spend time, money and efforts in vain. As your fanbase grows, remember that you can check social media statistics to keep track of all the information about your fans (location, age, gender, etc.). Social networks like Facebook and YouTube give you very detailed information that is useful in your growth as an artist and in the growth and knowledge of your fanbase. For example, knowing what time your fans are most active on social networks helps you understand the best time to share your posts to reach more people.

There’s still much more to talk about this topic but if I extended it further this post would become too long. For this reason, next Monday I will continue to talk about this topic with some more tips to increase your fanbase. It will be like a “Part II” of this Blog Post. In the meantime, you can go do your homework and if you have any questions you can leave in the comments. I’ll see you next week. Hasta!

ABOUT HOZHO

Hozho is a Portuguese DJ & Producer. His unique sounds, characterized by harmonious melodies in the middle of darkness, influenced by Minimal Techno, led him to create his own musical genre – Melodark Minimal. Hozho makes melodious what appears to be tenebrous. He is the calm during the storm. The Yin and Yang.